Facebook trains AI with public posts and pictures of Australians

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In Australia, Meta Platforms has admitted to using publicly accessible posts, images and other data from Australian adults on Facebook and Instagram to train its own artificial intelligence (AI) models. An opt-out option is not offered to users in the country, as is the case in Europe and the United States. This was explained by Melinda Claybaugh, data protection officer at Meta, at a hearing of the Australian Senate.

This so-called "scraping" does not take place in the EU. In June, Meta called off AI training with data under the GDPR for the time being after Ireland's data protection authority asked the Zuckerberg Group not to use data from Instagram and Facebook for the algorithm training of its large language models for the time being. A month earlier, Meta had made an objection form available to its users in the EU so that they could object to the use of their own data (opt-out).

Meta admits to scraping at Senate hearing

Australia does not (yet) have an equivalent to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), so politicians in the country have invited Meta Platforms to a hearing on these issues. When asked whether Meta's AI training with Australian contributions goes back to 2007, Claybaugh initially denied this: "We haven't done that." But the senators probed further, as Australia's ABC News reports.

"The truth is that Meta has simply decided that you will grab all photos and text from all public posts on Instagram or Facebook since 2007, unless you have deliberately set those posts to private since 2007," one senator said. "That's the reality, isn't it?" This, in turn, Claybaugh confirmed with a short answer, "Correct."

Minors excluded from AI training, almost

The meta data protection officer added that accounts of underage users are excluded from AI training. However, Claybaugh had to admit that children's photos posted publicly by parents, for example, are still picked up by the AI. However, she was unable to answer whether Meta uses posts and images from previous years for AI training if the user is now an adult but created their account as a minor.

Just a few days ago, Australia called for a minimum age for young people on social media after Australia's Prime Minister Albanese described social networks as harmful to children and announced that he would crack down on the protection of minors. He is proposing an age limit of between 14 and 16. A possible law is to be introduced to parliament this year.

Reform of the Data Protection Act overdue

However, Australian citizens have been waiting years for a new data protection law after it was established in 2020 that the current regulations are outdated. Australia's Attorney General announced earlier this year that the law reform would be announced in August. But now senators are bemoaning Australia's continued lack of data protection.

"There's a reason why people's privacy is protected in Europe and not in Australia: European lawmakers have enacted strong privacy laws," said Greens Senator Shoebridge. "Meta made it clear today that if the same laws were in place in Australia, Australians' data would be protected too."

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